The 2023 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[tobydawq]

Lol, it turns out I couldn't count after all. I had completely overlooked Baroncini's participation in Guangxi, and I had forgotten to count Milan's 7 points from stage 5 for this week.

It turns out that 4th in Hong Kong was in fact the lowest placing for Quick that would vault me over repre into the final podium. That was close!

Every other year I do well in this game. In 2019, I was 8th; in 2021, I was 11th just five points from top 10 and now the podium in 2023!

In 2025 I will for sure win. But I will try next year too of course

Thanks to skidmark for the organisation!

 

[Anderis]

38th place out of 103 players. I hoped for more, but realisitically it's not a very bad result for my first season. I'm kinda annoyed how you need to pick 33 riders but in the end, nothing really maters if you haven't picked Roglic. Congrats to those who saw that coming.

Blues in the bottle's squad seems unreal, Kuss and Healy were inspired choices and most of sub 100 points choices seem very good too and a lof of them were riders I would've never considered myself. I would have never seen Kevin Vermaerke having a 400 points season coming, for example. Also having just 1 rider below 94% return seems remarkable.

Thanks to skidmark for running the game! I can also confirm that I no longer have trouble accessing the spreadsheet for the final update, despite reporting problems with some of the earlier updates.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I successfully managed to defend last place. What a lovely rookie season for me, where my crushing victory in the Basque week was the biggest highlight.

Congratulations to BITB for winning the game and a big thank you to Skidmark (and to EITB for stepping in for a short stint) for hosting it. Without it, I wouldn't have had a spreadsheet with more than 100 Basque-ish riders in it. Some of them are juniors, U23 and amateurs who might never get to feature much in this game, or at least not for quite a while, but I would definitely never have taken the time to look at the results of that many Spanish and French races, if it hadn't been for this game. Whether my life has improved by having done so, is of course a completely different matter.

 

[tobydawq]

I successfully managed to defend last place. What a lovely rookie season for me, where my crushing victory in the Basque week was the biggest highlight.

Congratulations to BITB for winning the game and a big thank you to Skidmark (and to EITB for stepping in for a short stint) for hosting it. Without it, I wouldn't have had a spreadsheet with more than 100 Basque-ish riders in it. Some of them are juniors, U23 and amateurs who might never get to feature much in this game, or at least not for quite a while, but I would definitely never have taken the time to look at the results of that many Spanish and French races, if it hadn't been for this game. Whether my life has improved by having done so, is of course a completely different matter.

Of course it has.

And that's without knowing how it was before.

 

[Netserk]

Strong sprint in the end to just claw out a podium place, @tobydawq. A true disciple of Valverde.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Congratulations to BitB, a very consistent patron of all these games, and always with a nice word when sending in a team.

Great work, as ever, by Skidmark.

Back in January, I noted the Collective Wisdom team (see page 10): the most popular picks that could be formed into a squad of 33 riders and within budget. It would have come in 23rd place with 13668 points (and had 7 riders who failed to cover their cost)

 

[skidmark]

Massive thanks to skidmark for organizing the game again this year. Congrats to Blues in the Bottle for making all of us look bad. On my side, I'm glad to just sneak into the top 20 considering how slow my team started.

A few random notes about this season

- There are 11 people that have played the game every year. Blues in the Bottle is the 4th from that group to win an edition of the game and the third in a row (after skidmark 2012 and 2016, Object 2021, EvansIsTheBest 2022).
- This was a low scoring year. BITB's team is the 43rd best total ever (out of over 1500 teams). Senderos in 96th is the only other 2023 team to crack the top 100.
- BITB is the second team to win both the overall and the green jersey after my team in 2022.
- BITB is the first person to lead after each of the GTs.
- Senderos finished 2nd which is the highest place for a rookie since 2014 (Cykeltyven).
- There have been 14 weeks of 2000 points of more since the inception of the game but none in 2023.
- Adding up the scores across all seasons, skidmark is 29 points shy of 180 000 points. Madrazo is second more than 7 000 points back. Hugo Koblet didn't participate this year so Kazistuta is now 3rd all time about a thousand points behind Madrazo.

I have to start working on my team now but I'll be back later during the offseason with a comparison of Blues' team with other winners to see where they rank all time.

Thanks for all the meta-stats! I used to keep track season to season, but have just not been able to the last few years. I look forward to seeing what else you might post in the offseason. A side note - as game organizer, I'm very happy to see new teams succeed and see a new team on the podium, but as someone who's been playing since the start, I'm also very happy to see two teams that have been playing since the start win the last two editions. Nice to see things keep being fresh, but also see persistence pay off.

 

[Earns1985]

Also congratulations to the winner and a big thanks for organizing the game again!

It hasn´t been my year despite from a few good weeks in june and july (the months when Roglic didn´t ride )

Hoping for a better next year!

 

[shalgo]

Congratulations to BitB! In addition to a commanding victory, their team came incredibly close to the elusive all-riders-into-profit achievement.

I am very pleased with a top-ten finish—my first since my rookie year in 2012. Looking forward to next season. Thanks skidmark!

 

[Armchair cyclist]

KOLZE CHANGIZI Sebastian at some stage had his name changed to CHANGIZI Sebastian Kolze, which hadn't been picked up on.

That's a 25 point difference to 6 teams, and does make some minor changes in position, but 28th place is the highest affected.

Similarly, BLUME LEVY William got changed to LEVY William Blume without anyone noticing. 35 points for two teams. Ray10's position isn't changed, but both of these misses raise Redhead Dane in the table. Inside the top 80 now!

I say we ban these Danes who can't decide what order their names go in.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

You would have thought that with more than 100 of us playing we would have picked up every rider worth picking, but I have found a team made up of riders who were not selected at all, and yet would have scored a massive 18891 points. And that is with leaving out Jasper Philipsen with his 548 point profit, and Mads Pedersen (400)

The "Collective Ignorance" squad (after incorporating Samu's reminder about Kragh Andersen, which I should have known about):

	cost	points	profit
YATES Adam	988	1951	963
COSTA Rui Alberto Faria	236	985	749
CICCONE Giulio	507	1014	507
RUBIO REYES Einer Augusto	251	754	503
BENOOT Tiesj	543	992	449
ENGELHARDT Felix	43	456	413
DE KLEIJN Arvid	155	552	397
MOHORIC Matej	971	1340	369
VELASCO Simone	227	592	365
ZWIEHOFF Ben	95	459	364
TILLER Rasmus Fossum	391	745	354
MENTEN Milan	293	639	346
SEVILLA RIVERA Oscar Miguel	5	347	342
GROSSSCHARTNER Felix	289	625	336
DE BUYST Jasper	235	559	324
JACKSON George	12	336	324
BJERG Mikkel	159	469	310
CAVAGNA Rémi	300	603	303
VAN GILS Maxim	336	636	300
DVERSNES Fredrik	41	336	295
ZANONCELLO Enrico	28	322	294
FORMOLO Davide	279	560	281
MOLANO BENAVIDES Juan Sebastian	305	562	257
TOWNSEND Rory	85	339	254
SHEEHAN Riley	0	251	251
CALZONI Walter	38	283	245
VAN ASBROECK Tom	120	362	242
FAGUNDEZ LIMA Antonio Eric	0	239	239
VOISARD Yannis	52	284	232
VAN DE PAAR Jarne	5	237	232
KIELICH Timo	104	334	230
RODRIGUEZ MARTIN Cristian	263	492	229
BATSAIKHAN Tegshbayar	9	236	227
Total	7365	18891	11526

I couldn't get the team maximising programme to run this for some reason, so it's possible that it could be improved upon.

 

[tobydawq]

KOLZE CHANGIZI Sebastian at some stage had his name changed to CHANGIZI Sebastian Kolze, which hadn't been picked up on.

That's a 25 point difference to 6 teams, and does make some minor changes in position, but 28th place is the highest affected.

Similarly, BLUME LEVY William got changed to LEVY William Blume without anyone noticing. 35 points for two teams. Ray10's position isn't changed, but both of these misses raise Redhead Dane in the table. Inside the top 80 now!

I say we ban these Danes who can't decide what order their names go in.

Well, the order of their names hasn't changed, it's just that CQ doesn't know what to do with the middle names.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

You would have thought that with more than 100 of us playing we would have picked up every rider worth picking, but I have found a team made up of riders who were not selected at all, and yet would have scored a massive 19126 points. And that is with leaving out Jasper Philipsen with his 548 point profit, and Mads Pedersen (400)

The "Collective Ignorance" squad:

	cost	2023 points	profit
YATES Adam	988	1951	963
COSTA Rui Alberto Faria	236	985	749
CICCONE Giulio	507	1014	507
RUBIO REYES Einer Augusto	251	754	503
BENOOT Tiesj	543	992	449
ENGELHARDT Felix	43	456	413
DE KLEIJN Arvid	155	552	397
MOHORIC Matej	971	1340	369
KRAGH ANDERSEN Søren	362	727	365
VELASCO Simone	227	592	365
ZWIEHOFF Ben	95	459	364
TILLER Rasmus Fossum	391	745	354
MENTEN Milan	293	639	346
SEVILLA RIVERA Oscar Miguel	5	347	342
GROSSSCHARTNER Felix	289	625	336
DE BUYST Jasper	235	559	324
JACKSON George	12	336	324
BJERG Mikkel	159	469	310
CAVAGNA Rémi	300	603	303
VAN GILS Maxim	336	636	300
DVERSNES Fredrik	41	336	295
ZANONCELLO Enrico	28	322	294
FORMOLO Davide	279	560	281
MOLANO BENAVIDES Juan Sebastian	305	562	257
TOWNSEND Rory	85	339	254
SHEEHAN Riley	0	251	251
CALZONI Walter	38	283	245
VAN ASBROECK Tom	120	362	242
FAGUNDEZ LIMA Antonio Eric	0	239	239
VOISARD Yannis	52	284	232
VAN DE PAAR Jarne	5	237	232
KIELICH Timo	104	334	230
BATSAIKHAN Tegshbayar	9	236	227

I couldn't get the team maximising programme to run this for some reason, so it's possible that it could be improved upon.

Søren Kragh was actually picked by 10 people, but I guess his name must have been changed as well,

 

[RedheadDane]

...both of these misses raise Redhead Dane in the table. Inside the top 80 now!

Wo-HOOOO!

 

[will-10]

Ah just missed the top 10... Blake not quite Quick enough in HK to tie that up

Congrats BITB, thanks again for everything skidmark. Looking forward to next year's already, don't think I've missed a season so hopefully make an appearance or two in some off season all-time rankings based on persistence alone

 

[Armchair cyclist]

In terms of riders failing to break even, the average was just over 8 and the mode was 9. BitB had 4 of these mis-picks, as did 6 others, but Oliveira, 12th overall, had only three, all of whom scored >80% of their cost.
BitB only had one rider returning less than 94% of cost (Luke Plapp, 77%)

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Ah just missed the top 10... Blake not quite Quick enough in HK to tie that up

Congrats BITB, thanks again for everything skidmark. Looking forward to next year's already, don't think I've missed a season so hopefully make an appearance or two in some off season all-time rankings based on persistence alone

Rank​	Team​	Total​
1​	skidmark​	179,971​
2​	MADRAZO​	172,753​
3​	Kazistuta​	171,687​
4​	EvansIsTheBest​	171,214​
5​	Object​	166,502​
6​	JPettersen​	162,330​
7​	will10​	161,179​
8​	Armchair Cyclist​	160,308​
9​	shalgo​	159,839​
10​	Blues in the Bottle​	158,843​
11​	Hugo Koblet​	158,396​
12​	Mellow Velo​	154,101​
13​	Jakob747​	152,330​
14​	Total Package​	151,091​
15​	greenedge​	150,451​
16​	vladimir​	150,450​
17​	adamski101​	149,558​
18​	Squire​	148,260​
19​	the asian​	145,905​
20​	18-Valve. (pithy)​	145,079​

This is based on the original update from skidmark so it doesn't include the few riders names fixes yet but it barely matters in comparison of 10+ years of team scoring.

- skidmark is over half a season in front of everyone else but there’s still a fun three way battle for the last two podium spots.
- BITIB did just enough this year to make the top 10.
- shalgo is the best placed manager to have missed an edition of the game (fun fact, if you take away skidmark’s record 2012 season away from his total he would still rank in front of shalgo).
- squire is the best placed manager to have missed multiple editions of the game.

 

[adamski101]

congrats to BitB on the win. Huge thanks to Skidmark for all his hard work on running the game.

My team finished with a a bit of a flourish but ultimately the decision not to pick Roglic cost me. That said I can take some solace in fac that my team was 2nd best non Roglic squad and I just sneeked into the top 20.

Already looking forward to next years edition

 

[will-10]

Rank​	Team​	Total​
1​	skidmark​	179,971​
2​	MADRAZO​	172,753​
3​	Kazistuta​	171,687​
4​	EvansIsTheBest​	171,214​
5​	Object​	166,502​
6​	JPettersen​	162,330​
7​	will10​	161,179​
8​	Armchair Cyclist​	160,308​
9​	shalgo​	159,839​
10​	Blues in the Bottle​	158,843​
11​	Hugo Koblet​	158,396​
12​	Mellow Velo​	154,101​
13​	Jakob747​	152,330​
14​	Total Package​	151,091​
15​	greenedge​	150,451​
16​	vladimir​	150,450​
17​	adamski101​	149,558​
18​	Squire​	148,260​
19​	the asian​	145,905​
20​	18-Valve. (pithy)​	145,079​

This is based on the original update from skidmark so it doesn't include the few riders names fixes yet but it barely matters in comparison of 10+ years of team scoring.

- skidmark is over half a season in front of everyone else but there’s still a fun three way battle for the last two podium spots.
- BITIB did just enough this year to make the top 10.
- shalgo is the best placed manager to have missed an edition of the game (fun fact, if you take away skidmark’s record 2012 season away from his total he would still rank in front of shalgo).
- squire is the best placed manager to have missed multiple editions of the game.

That's amazing that you have all that data.... I love it

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

That's amazing that you have all that data.... I love it

The credit goes to skidmark for preserving the end of year updates of every edition. Otherwise I couldn't have compiled that data. Speaking of data here's the optimal team someone could have come up with:

Spoiler: 2023 Optimal Team

Rider​	Price​	Score​	Popularity​
ROGLIC Primoz​	1240​	2744​	57​
YATES Adam​	988​	1951​	0​
HIRSCHI Marc​	684​	1883​	4​
GANNA Filippo​	574​	1418​	7​
KUSS Sepp​	246​	1263​	9​
HEALY Ben​	167​	1088​	4​
COSTA Rui Alberto Faria​	236​	985​	0​
GALL Felix​	238​	967​	3​
JORGENSON Matteo​	337​	936​	5​
VAN WILDER Ilan​	232​	933​	34​
VERMEERSCH Florian​	275​	922​	7​
GREGOIRE Romain​	108​	784​	60​
BAGIOLI Andrea​	321​	765​	17​
WAERENSKJOLD Søren​	168​	756​	11​
RUBIO REYES Einer Augusto​	251​	754​	0​
WELSFORD Sam​	199​	636​	2​
LAZKANO LOPEZ Oier​	148​	615​	1​
PENHOËT Paul​	132​	591​	14​
MULUBRHAN Henok​	181​	573​	2​
DE KLEIJN Arvid​	155​	552​	0​
TARLING Joshua​	0​	530​	45​
MARTINEZ Lenny​	121​	530​	58​
MOSCHETTI Matteo​	89​	494​	15​
GEE Derek​	71​	477​	1​
ZWIEHOFF Ben​	95​	459​	0​
ENGELHARDT Felix​	43​	456​	0​
VERMAERKE Kevin​	78​	400​	4​
BOL Cees​	57​	381​	14​
SEVILLA RIVERA Oscar Miguel​	5​	347​	0​
VADER Milan​	5​	336​	13​
JACKSON George​	12​	336​	0​
ZANONCELLO Enrico​	28​	322​	0​
LIPOWITZ Florian​	9​	298​	1​
Total	7493​	26482​	388​

It won't shock anybody considering the low scoring year but we collectively sucked at predicting the optimal team. Shout out to @vickyriso (Lipowitz), @Bicycle Boy (Gee), @Samu Cuenca (Lazkano) for having unique picks make the cut.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

So the winning score was 61.7% of what was possible: I'm not sure what the equivalent has been in previous years, but that seems not particularly low scoring compared to what I see in other games.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Some disastrous picks should be acknowledged: apart from 13 selected riders who failed to register a single point, there were some who took a big lump of the budget with little attempt to pay back the faith shown in them; Honore (-151, 40 teams) and Sagan (-235, 29) were picked often enough to be in the Collective 'Wisdom' team, and Piccolo (-415, 22 teams) nearly made it in there too, but worse still in terms of gross loss were Enric Mas (-435, 2), Mollema (-440, 1), Teuns (-482, 1), Girmay (-592, 8), Hayter (-605, 3), Arensman (-672, 3) and Higuita (-869, 1).

 

[Armchair cyclist]

One other metric that I like to note when I crunch numbers after a game is the 'Impeccable picks': if you are happy with all but one of your team, who you should have chosen as the final piece of the jigsaw, considering what spending power you had left.

Another way of putting it: if you selected, say, Michael Woods (as six people did, and he did OK with a 239 point profit), you would have been better of 467 points better off sending in a team that had Kuss instead and was at least 311 points under budget that included Kuss instead. But few of us would feel we had done the right thing with a team cost of 7189 (only Samu's Basque Street Boys had a lower team cost). Spending to the limit is not always the thing to do, yet three quarters of us left just 10 points or less unspent.

If your remaining budget was	You should have picked
3398 or more​	POGACAR Tadej
3154-3397​	EVENEPOEL Remco
2204-3153​	VINGEGAARD RASMUSSEN Jonas
1240-2203​	ROGLIC Primoz
988-1239​	YATES Adam
684-987​	HIRSCHI Marc
574-683​	GANNA Filippo
246-573​	KUSS Sepp
167-245​	HEALY Ben
108-166​	GREGOIRE Romain
0-107​	TARLING Joshua

 

[will-10]

Some disastrous picks should be acknowledged: apart from 13 selected riders who failed to register a single point, there were some who took a big lump of the budget with little attempt to pay back the faith shown in them; Honore (-151, 40 teams) and Sagan (-235, 29) were picked often enough to be in the Collective 'Wisdom' team, and Piccolo (-415, 22 teams) nearly made it in there too, but worse still in terms of gross loss were Enric Mas (-435, 2), Mollema (-440, 1), Teuns (-482, 1), Girmay (-592, 8), Hayter (-605, 3), Arensman (-672, 3) and Higuita (-869, 1).

Bro leaked his longlist for '24

 

[Armchair cyclist]

In page one of this thread, @Squire raises the statistical factor of the 'Year Before' score: a high score there indicates a team very reliant on riders who had previously scored well, but had a bad season in the year before the game, and therefore a modest price compared to previous achievements, a low score shows confidence in up and coming riders being trusted to continue to improve. BitB scored 13749 by that metric, so somewhat below the 1500-1700 that Squire described as a typical winner's score, and below the average and the median in this year's analysis.

The top five teams on the basis of Year Before score ranged from 13th to 86th in the actual results, so those of us who get the spreadsheet to show those who seemed to underperform in the year that set the prices should not be too reliant on it (I include myself in that: by year before score ranks 18 places higher than my game score).
There are some much lower Year Before prices in the lower realms of the table, but looking at the top 50, there is no correlation between Year Before score and final position (Spearman's R= 0.066)